


Dry County Foxes

by Schistosity



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Prohibition Era, Extended Metaphors and River Musings, Gen, Historical, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Period Typical Attitudes, gonna be a lot of historical inaccuracies in here but I TRIED, still writing voltron fic in 2019 sue me, the prohibition au no one asked for
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-16 11:31:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17548883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schistosity/pseuds/Schistosity
Summary: It's the height of the summer of 1927 and the city of St. Louis withers while its underground blossoms. Amidst a chaotic world of moonshine and mobsters a lonely speakeasy – the Chateau des Lions – opens its doors to the Gateway City with something far more ambitious than just illicit booze on the menu.Revenge, served cold, and Allura AuClair is going to need help to see it through to the end.DISCONTINUED.





	1. An Incident at Lawrence

**Author's Note:**

> This is something I started writing after watching 91 Days (which is kickass, go watch it) and I've had drafted on my computer for YONKS. I was just dying to do something with this, literally since like SEASON 4, because Prohibition is one of the most fascinating time periods in American history to me and the Voltron crew are so fun to write. This was bound to happen. Let's make magic. 
> 
> Also, this might have nice, light-hearted moments in it, but it is most definitely not very light-hearted. Sorry in advance, but rest assured there’s no major character death.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which alcohol is stolen, a chance encounter is had, and a lesson in flammability is unexpectedly learned.

_July 7 th 1927.  
Bathans, Missouri. _

The hot, midday sun beat down on the town of Bathans, Missouri with the ferocity of high summer, its bright form wavering through the lens of its own heat. The residents of the small farming township had, for the most part, secluded themselves in the shady indoors to wait out the nigh unbearable heat of the day, leaving their streets almost barren.

The heat had made the people of Bathans foolish. Like small forest animals basking in the sun, their relaxation had unwittingly left their dens unguarded and open to the sly foxes that prowled the dry counties.

The car could be heard before it was seen. The sound of it tore through the silence that permeated the sleepy town, its loud growl sending flocks of birds into the air before the shiny, blue beast even crested the hill. The car and its driver peeled off the main road before hitting the town center – a small blessing that gave the people of Bathans permission to stay inside, permission to ignore the strange creature passing through their midst. It was a passer-by, nothing more.

The car turned onto a side road, the hard-packed dirt underneath it giving way to loose soil and stone. The driver gripped the wheel a little tighter in his hands, and reluctantly slowed. 

The road wound down an incline, past stony farmhouses in various states of disrepair and low fences caging in every imaginable assortment of underfed farm animals. The car made a sharp turn onto another, smaller road, kicking up a wave of hot dust that hung in the air like mud in water.

The earth, like everything in the country as of the last seven years, was nauseatingly dry.

The driver turned the car down a final stretch and began to slow. He carefully eased the car over a misshapen, natural levee, the seat and wheel hitching awkwardly as the chassis shuddered over the uneven road. The driver looked up, catching a glimpse of the nearby river through the trees that lined the bank, snatches of iridescence on its surface from the bright sun.

It was pretty, and the driver let himself be momentarily distracted by it.

“Hey, Lance!”

The driver slammed the brakes and the car came to a screeching halt in the middle of the road. Everything not nailed down was flung forward, including the driver, whose head smacked against the steering wheel in a movement that would have been funny if it hadn’t hurt like a bitch. He looked up over the wheel, glaring through the dusty windshield at the cause of his misfortune. The cause of his misfortune grinned back at him.

“Fuck you, Pidge,” Lance huffed.

“Afternoon!” Pidge greeted.

Lance sighed and untangled himself from the wheel. Pidge sauntered up to the driver’s side window, so she could talk to him, obviously angling herself so she could stand under the small shade the car’s body provided. Lance glared at her.

“What were you doing in the middle of the road?” He asked, bypassing greetings entirely. “I could have hit you.”

“Nice to see you too, Lance.” Pidge waved a hand dismissively, her glasses glinting in the light. “I would have gotten out of the way, you know.”

“Sure.” Lance rolled his eyes. “I’m guessing you’re _here_ and not downriver because…?”

“The original meeting place got comprised,” she said. The atmosphere immediately became more serious.

Lance blanched. “What? By who?”

Pidge gritted her teeth, looking irritated at the memory. “Iverson’s boys came through looking for the hooch. I told them there wasn’t any, but they tore the place apart anyway.”

Lance sighed, leaning back against his seat. “I’m glad we had the forethought to split up…. I thought for sure they wouldn’t follow us over the river.”

“It’s concerning that he feels confident enough to send them this far outside the county,” Pidge agreed. “It means he either has _way_ more guys in his operation than we thought, or he’s just a stubborn bastard.”

“I’d like to believe the last one,” Lance said. “But I’m right in thinking we shouldn’t count on that, aren’t I?”

“That you are.”

“Then we’d better get to Lawrence soon,’ Lance said, revving the engine to make sure it was still on. ‘I don’t want to get caught up in something violent today; I’m wearing my nice shoes.’

Pidge laughed and peeled away from the side of the car, making her way around to the passenger door. As she clambered into the seat beside him, Lance took catalog of how she looked. He hadn’t seen her in the weeks since they’d split up for this job, but she looked exactly same as ever. Her too-big clothes hung off her small frame; a grimy shirt with the sleeves rolled up too far, stained overalls, and tatty shoes.

Lance wouldn’t be caught dead in clothes like Pidge’s, and he wasn’t entirely happy having them near his car either. Unlike her and her crew, he actually cared about looking presentable – however “presentable” one could be on his pay. Sure, that might mean simple cotton button-ups, slacks and tweed newsboys, but at least he kept them _clean_.

Pidge was small for her age, almost unbelievably so, but Lance supposed that worked in her favour – especially in this business. She was willowy without height or grace, a slender figure of pale, freckled limbs and unruly auburn hair. The first time Lance had seen her, he’d heard his mother’s voice in his head. “ _Dios!_ Someone _feed_ that girl!”.

Lance on the other hand, was tall and lanky, with dark skin and close-cropped hair. He was far more threatening than Pidge; next to her he probably conjured the image of some kind of kidnapper and a poor middle-schooler. It didn’t matter that she was ten times more cunning and sneaky than Lance could ever dream of being.

“How’s the juice?” Pidge asked, jerking Lance out of his thoughts. She looked at him, inquisitive eyes tinged with concern, because the “juice” was the whole reason either of them were here.

Like any word in a foreign language, the code term translated itself seamlessly. Lance knew it wouldn’t have been damaged in the hard stop earlier – he was experienced enough in transporting goods like these to be confident of that fact. But he knew Pidge had reason to be worried, so he turned around to the back seat and threw back the tarp that hid the cargo he had hauled day and night across the state line.

Sitting tightly in the back seat were rows and rows of bottles filled with golden-brown liquid. They, perhaps, looked unappealing on the surface – a thin brew, with the colour and consistency of dirty water – but to them, and others in their line of work, they were more precious than the Gods’ own ichor. Illegal whiskey – almost 100 bottles of it.

Pidge reached out, running her hand over the stained glass and faded labels, each declaring their contents to be “Iverson’s”. _Not anymore_ , Lance thought. Pidge breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. Okay… okay, that’s good.”

“You alright?” Lance asked as Pidge sank back into her seat. She looked almost miserable, her eyes lined with worry behind her giant glasses.

“Are we in over our heads, Lance?” She asked. The question would have been disarming if Lance hadn’t been asking himself the same thing the entire drive from Nashville to Bathans.

“It’s a bit late to be asking that,” Lance muttered. “But if you want my opinion, this is the best thing we could be doing for ourselves, and that’s what matters.”

Pidge looked at him for a long moment, as if trying to find some hint of dishonesty in his expression. But Lance wasn’t lying when he said this was the best thing for them, and he wanted Pidge to know that.

“Okay,” she said finally. “Let’s go.”

Lance gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder. “That’s what I like to hear!” He said, beginning the process of turning the car back on.  

“How long is it going to take to get to Lawrence?” Pidge asked. “I don’t want Hunk to be waiting after dark.”

Lance took a pause before answering, mentally counting the miles. “A couple hours on the back roads,” he said. “How far away do you think Iverson’s boys are?”

“I have no idea, I just hope we make it there before them.”

Lance laughed. “You forget you’re driving with the best smuggler this side of anywhere!”

Pidge raised an eyebrow. “You once drove Iverson’s Chrysler into the Cumberland River.”

Lance laughed, slamming the gas and throwing the car into rapid forward movement. “I said the best, not the safest!”

The blue beast that had torn so uproariously into Bathans, Missouri, tore its way out in much the same fashion. With another profound roar, the car and its two passengers turned back onto the main road, letting the township recede into the distance behind the storm clouds of dust they kicked up in their wake. They had, for now, left the people of Bathans to their own monotony – allowing them to turn a blind eye to the goings on of the foxes of the dry counties and the unsavoury dealings they made under the noses of the river towns. For now, they could forget about them. For now, like small animals always did, they thanked God that trouble had seemed to pass them by.

 

* * *

 

_7 th July 1927  
Lawrence, Missouri. _

The white steeple of Lawrence’s only Catholic church stretched high above the riverside town like the needle of a giant sundial, casting a long, thin shadow across the Mississippi, signalling the evening.

Most of the residents of Lawrence had filtered away from the main streets as twilight approached from the east. This was the time for liminal business; the trading of things best not traded, strange deeds and illicit treasures changing hands on the docks and in the alleys of the town, with silent getaways erasing all evidence before the sun came up the next day.

Now was the time for the foxes of the dry counties to do their work.

Father Emmett Gordon was busy locking up his church. As he walked down the worn steps to his tiny town-car, he would notice the lack of crows along his church’s roof-line. They were usually an ever-present motif that many of his parishioners disliked but he privately thought gave the place a bit of much needed drama.

They were absent that evening, but he wouldn’t give much thought to what could have possibly scared them off as he drove away. 

In the steeple of Lawrence’s only Catholic church, a young man and a cat sat in the shadows, watching the father’s car turn off onto another road and disappear. The man, obscured by the shadows of the bell-tower, had black hair and piercing eyes that evoked an image of the dark birds his presence had rid the church of.

The man’s cat, a ginger ball of fluff, sat curled on his lap, purring as he pet her with the hand he wasn’t using to shield his eyes from the low summer sun. He was looking over the town far more intently than her and she didn’t like it. Slowly getting to her feet, the cat raised her head to bump the man’s chin, mewling for attention.

 _“How are you doing, Cat?”_ The man asked in Korean, another thing that set him out of place in this small Missouri town. He finally looked away from the horizon and gave her a scratch behind the ear. Cat meowed.

Keith Kogane pulled his jacket tighter around his shoulders, careful not to upset Cat’s position. It wouldn’t be getting cold tonight, not with a day this hot, but he still felt a chill as he watched the sun sink lower on the horizon.

He let his eyes drift across the town, skimming the janky line Lawrence’s buildings painted across the normally flat horizon. His gaze stopped on the town hall, the old park, and finally the train station and the old distillery, down by the docks. That would be his final stop after all was done tonight. From there, he could hitch a ride to St. Louis. A ride one step closer to freedom.

First, though, he needed money. That was where sneaking up into a church’s bell-tower came in.

Keith looked down at his watch. Father Gordon was most certainly back at home now. He took a deep breath, steeling his nerves.

_“Okay, Cat, let’s go.”_

Keith carefully moved Cat from his lap to the roof, swinging his leg over into the hole beneath the bell. Easing himself down into the gap, he locked eyes with his cat’s.

 _“Meet me downstairs,”_ he said, and he dropped down into the tower.

Keith swung off a wooden rafter and latched onto the interior of the bell-tower. His fingers gripped into the rough, dry wood, the peeling white paint curling uncomfortably under his fingernails. He began to climb down, careful not to brush against the ropes that controlled the church bell; any sound meant the end for him.

Keith had robbed enough churches in the past year to know almost instinctively where they kept their communion wine. In recent years they had come under higher and higher security; wine in the dry counties was like water in a desert, but they were easy enough to find if you were clever.

Catholic churches were always the best targets. Keith had found that they usually had far more alcohol stashed away than other places of worship, some of which had none at all. If there was something Catholics liked, it was free booze, and if there was something Prohibition Catholics liked, it was any booze at all.

Communion wine wasn’t particularly alcoholic, but it was the best quality alcohol in the country – the only thing with a 100% guarantee of not blinding you if you drank it. That fact, in and of itself, was worth money. It had been Keith’s source of income for months.

Keith pulled a hairpin out from behind his ear, where he kept a small cluster of them hidden away. He jammed it into the lock on the office door and began working it. The silence of the church was tenser than he liked, but he steeled himself. This was in and out, just a normal job.

The lock clicked open, and Keith sighed in relief.

The back office of the church was a modest situation, to say the least. There was a small oak desk, a few filing cabinets, and a large stained-glass window depicting some biblical scene Keith couldn’t place. For the most part, the room was sparsely decorated. The only thing of note was a large safe behind the desk. Keith ignored it, heading instead behind the desk and kicking open the bottom drawer. Another, smaller safe was wedged in the back. That was the one he needed. He crouched down and began to pick at the lock.

Keith wasn’t religious, but he always felt a little bad about stealing from churches. He found himself making extended eye contact with a tiny statue of Jesus on the desk. The poor man was stretched out on the cross, hands and feet and face bleeding as he died. His face, twisted in agony, was framed by a radiant halo. It made Keith more than a little uncomfortable.

The lock on the safe clicked and Keith tugged the door open, revealing a small stash of bills and two bottles of communion wine. Proper, legal alcohol in its natural habitat. Keith grabbed a bottle, but left the second one, opting to instead grab a fistful of bills which he shoved in his pockets.

Keith stood up, quietly clicking the safe shut and dusting off his jacket. Before he left the office, he saluted the little Jesus.

“Thanks for the wine,” he mumbled. Hopefully the Good Lord wouldn’t mind too much, feeding the needy was supposed to be his thing, right?

Keith emerged quietly from the room, and turned around to shut the door. With any luck the church wouldn’t know they’d been robbed until next Sunday, giving Keith enough time to be on the road north to St. Louis, to become a mere memory on the streets of Lawrence.

But as the office door clicked shut, he heard another click – the opening of the front door. 

“Well, well, well… Look what we have here…” A gruff voice drawled from behind him. Keith turned and felt a sharp blade of icy fear plunge into his chest. Two men stood in the doorway. They were dirty-looking, brutes of men in stained overalls. One was large and muscled, with thinning hair and beady eyes. The other was scrawny and lithe, with gnarled teeth and a newsboy tugged low over his face.

 _Don’t panic_. They were just thieves. _Probably_. Keith could shake them. _Maybe_.

“When they told us to check the town I thought they might’ve gone a little crazy!” The little one sneered – Keith wasn’t good with accents, but the guy sounded Southern. “But here y’are!”

He started to raise his hands, wine still clenched in his fist. He was embarrassed at how white his knuckles were. Who were these guys? How did they know he’d be here?

The big guy on the right grunted at him, striding forward. “Drop the liquor, kid.”

Panic rose in his chest, bubbling and boiling like hot water. _They found you,_ the voice in his head said. _They found you, and you didn’t even get that far._

Keith’s head span, and suddenly purple streaked across his mind. The man was saying something to him, and his hand was reaching into his coat – the sliver sheen of a gun flashing in the dim light. The purple, like a violent violet wound, burned against Keith’s eyes. He moved before he could even think about it.

Keith drew his pistol with expert quickness and shot twice; once into the big one’s shoulder and once into the little one’s thigh. That one screamed and fell to his knees – an action that probably worsened the injury. The big one stayed on his feet, which was admirable in a morbid way, one hand flying to his shoulder and the other shooting out to steady himself on one of the pews. His gun clattered to the floor.

_They aren’t going to get you, not today._

But then the purple faded from Keith’s vision, and with a sinking terror in his chest it left nothing but the shattering realization of a great mistake.

They were wearing orange bandannas, symbols of a gang Keith only knew from reputation. A Tennessee gang, and that meant…

_They weren’t the ones._

“Fuck,” Keith muttered.

The big guy howled in pain.

“Uh…” Keith stood in the aisle awkwardly. He didn’t know what to say now. “I thought you were someone else… sorry.”

The big one spat blood and lunged for Keith. “You motherfu– “

Keith decided he didn’t want to explain himself and kicked the man in the jaw, sending him sprawling across the aisle alongside his friend. He didn’t wait for a response. He tucked the communion wine under his arm and sprinted for the exit. There was a gunshot, from which thug Keith didn’t stop to see, and the wood on the right side of the door-frame splintered outwards. Keith’s heart skipped a beat, but he kept running.

He burst through the double doors and ran down the steps. Cat was there, waiting for him, and he didn’t break stride as he unceremoniously scooped her up and shoved her under his arm alongside the wine. She growled at him.

 _“Sorry, Cat!”_ he cried. _“We’re going!”_

Cat yowled.

Keith ran for the nearest alleyway, awkwardly juggling a gun, a cat, and a bottle of wine as his feet took him to his getaway’s hiding place. Keith skid to a stop beside a dumpster, kicking away a clumsy barricade of boxes to reveal his bike – sleek and red and the only valuable thing he had to his name. He tossed the wine into the saddle bag, shoved Cat into his jacket, and jammed his pistol clumsily into his waistband.

“Hey, kid! Get back here! Where’s our hooch?!”

Okay, now Keith was _positive_ these guys had the wrong person.

Keith turned to see the big guy, staggering out of the church, still holding his shoulder.

_Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!_

Keith slung a leg over the seat and edged the motorcycle out from behind the piles of garbage he had hidden it behind. Sending one last box skittering across the alley, the motorcycle was free of the barricade. Keith revved the engine and tore off down the narrow street, letting the screams of the bootleggers fade into the distance. He turned around.

“I don’t think I’m the person you’re looking for!” He yelled at the thug’s receding form.

A gunshot rang out again, kicking up dust a few feet from Keith’s back tire, but he was already speeding away.  

Cat wormed her way to the collar of Keith’s coat, poking her ginger head over his top button and mewling curiously.

 _“It’s alright, Cat,”_ Keith said. _“We’re getting out of here a little earlier than planned, that’s all.”_

As Keith ripped down the side streets of Lawrence, a dozen different questions swirled in his mind.

Had his paranoia finally driven him crazy? Of _course_ those guys hadn’t been after him… how egotistical did he have to be to think people would cross hell and high water to follow a runt like him? But if they weren’t after him before, they were after him now, and what was a Tennessean gang doing in Lawrence?

Whatever the answers were, Keith knew he didn’t want to stick around to hear them. He turned off towards the train-yard just as the sun dipped below the horizon, spilling the last of its light over the dark land like the final drops of whiskey. The day had ended, but the night had just begun.

 

* * *

 

Lance pulled the car into the alleyway behind the old distillery and turned off the engine. He opened the driver’s door and immediately regretted it as the hot evening air rolled into the cab. The air was thick with the scent of smoke and industrial garbage that spread from the adjacent train-yards. Lance stifled a gag. This was a nasty place, one that only became nastier as the sun sank low in the sky.

It had taken him and Pidge seven hours to get to Lawrence, a time-frame not aided by her insistence that they take every swerving back-road imaginable as they picked their way north along the river. There had been a few false scares; a few sightings of distant cars that never turned out to be anything more than businessmen or farmers on commutes far less dangerous than theirs. When they had finally caught sight of Lawrence on the horizon the sun was already setting, and the lights of the town were a welcome beacon.

Pidge yanked the side-door open and clambered out onto the street. She stretched over-dramatically, her joints clicking. Lance made a face at the uncomfortable noise that Pidge, thankfully, didn’t see.

“When are we meeting Hunk?” Lance asked.

“Now,” Pidge said, straightening her jacket. “He should be inside.”

The Outram Distillery in Lawrence was once a behemoth of industry, but now it lay rotting on the banks of the Mississippi like a hollowed, scavenged carcass of the old world. It was an old world where their line of work hadn’t had to be done in shady alleys, muddy back-roads, and sweltering bayous. Lance couldn’t remember a time like that – stories of it were almost as unbelievable as the Greek myths children learned in school.

It couldn’t hurt to dream of those days though.

Outram Distillery was one of hundreds in the state that had been abandoned at the turn of the decade. After the passage of the Volstead Act, the life had been sucked out these places with the quiet swiftness of a biblical purge. Now they were nothing, nothing but dens for squatters, junkies, and, of course, bootleggers. 

Bootleggers like Lance found refuge in the lonely skeletons of their more legal predecessors. After most of the distilling equipment had been dismantled, the feds had pretty much left the places alone; if there were somewhere bootleggers _wouldn’t_ be, it was a useless distillery, right?

He and Pidge made their way into the dark bowels of the old distillery. It didn’t take them long to find Hunk within its towering walls.

Hunk Garrett was not easily missed: He stood at 6 feet, 2 inches and was exactly as strong as he looked, which was _very_ strong. He was from the islands far across the sea to the west and Lance had never asked how someone from as far away as Hunk came had managed to end up taking Chemistry in a college in Tennessee, but that’s where he’d met Pidge, and that’s how he’d met Lance. That had been the best thing that had happened to Lance in years so he wasn’t one to question it.

 “How’s it going, Big Guy?” Lance greeted. Hunk smiled as the two approached.

“Working hard! How’s it been for you?”

“Eventful!” Lance said elbowing Pidge. “Pidge got stopped by Iverson’s boys just before Bathans.”

Hunk’s entire demeanor changed to one of deep fearfulness. “Pidge got _what_!? But we crossed state lines?!”

Hunk was smart, he was resourceful, but most of all he was scared enough about everything to keep the other two members of their trio grounded. That was one of the reasons Lance liked him.

“It’s alright,” Pidge assured. “Just tell us what we’re doing now.”

Hunk dove right into their plan. “I’ve found an easy access point just down the way where the train’s going to be stopping. All we gotta do is get the loading ramp ready and we’re good to drive Old Blue there into one of the back carriages. Those won’t be unloaded until St. Louis, so we should be left alone long enough to slip out a town or two before then.”

Pidge and Lance nodded.

“Oh! One more thing!” Hunk leaned over and began to dig through his bag, eventually pulling out a sketchbook. He opened it and handed it to Pidge. A dozen prototype designs for whiskey labels jumped out at them from the pages in scrawls of pencil and charcoal.

“ _Holt & Garrett_,” Hunk said, smiling at the expression of borderline ecstasy on Pidge’s face as she surveyed the designs. “Our names in lights, just like you wanted.”

Pidge Gunderson was not Katharine Holt’s real name, but Lance had enough experience with fake names to not care about that part of her all that much. She had reasons for it – reasons involving tiring gender politics that Lance hoped would be sorted out before he had the chance or cause to bring a daughter into the world.

Pidge was adamant they use the alias in the day to day – especially when conducting any dealings resembling business. Lance understood her feelings; names were clothes, and sometimes it became hard to take them off. But she had insisted their first line of sellable hooch have her real name on it. Hunk had made that happen.

“They look _amazing_ , Hunk,” she said, grin audible in every syllable. Hunk replied with a flourishing bow.

“Twas nothing, my friend,” he said, badly imitating a British accent. The trio laughed.

Lance still wasn’t feeling entirely steady. It was more than jitters, at this point, they had travelled too far and invested too much in this for this to be anything other than _fear_ he was feeling.

But it was his only option – _their_ only option – to get out of their shit lives and into something better.

The news had arrived in the Nashville speakeasies about two months ago. It had snuck into their quiet halls in the form of hushed rumours and half-drunk stories. Pidge, of course, had heard them first.

The rumour was that a wealthy benefactor in St. Louis was trying to start a speakeasy. The story was untrustworthy for the most part; it morphed and changed between tellings with all the fluidity of the river waters it had travelled down to reach them. Some said the benefactor was a disgraced European noble, others said he was the son of a Sicilian mobster or an old brewery owner not ready to give up his ways. Some claimed his wealth totaled in the hundreds of millions, and that he’d give money to whomever sold him the best hooch in the land.

That last claim was usually accompanied by someone attempting to sell Iverson’s boys their hooch (the best in the land).

But no matter how outlandish the details were, the core of the story remained constant and solid from telling to telling. Someone in St. Louis was looking to enter the bootlegging scene, and he was offering money for help – a proposition with only one entry requirement: Whiskey. A lot of it. 

“We have to go,” Lance had said after Pidge had brought the rumour to his attention. “We’re going _nowhere_ here. This is a chance to do something more with our lives than being Iverson’s errand boys.”

“By being someone else’s errand boys?” Hunk had asked.

“You know what I mean, Hunk,” Lance had almost pleaded.

“I wouldn’t mind getting out of here,” Pidge had said. “I’d kind of like to make booze without Iverson’s name on it for once.”

Hunk had looked nervous, but his voice had been surprisingly steady when he agreed. “Okay… When do we start?”

It had taken them several weeks to lay out the operation. It involved a lot of planning, timing, and luck. Hunk and Pidge had left first, slipping out of Nashville on a border-bound train in the middle of the night. Lance made his escape about a week later amidst the confusion caused by the two chemists’ disappearances. Iverson had cared more about the mutiny of his prized moonshiners than he ever would about a single bootlegger, so Lance had taken advantage of the old man’s tunnel-like focus on Hunk and Pidge to slip out of the city with almost 100 bottles of his best booze (and some of Pidge’s more experimental stuff for good measure).

The plan was simple in theory: they would split up to draw off any attention, and Lance would pick them up along the way. Together, they’d board the north-bound train from Lawrence to St. Louis, smuggling Lance’s car into one of the back carriages that stopped right next to the old distillery. On the last stop before St. Louis they would slip out again and drive unnoticed into the city.

In practice it was more complicated. Though he hadn’t seen any in person, the fact some of Iverson’s gang had followed them across the river had Lance worried. He hoped they had given up, or that he and Pidge had driven fast enough to make it to Lawrence before them. Lance was usually an optimistic person, but years in the business of smuggling had taught him that caution wasn’t a pessimistic trait to value; there was nothing more optimistic than wanting to not die. 

He knew they couldn’t relax until the moment they handed the whiskey over to the buyers. Only then could they stop looking over their shoulders. For now, they needed to act fast.

“Now that we’re all caught up,” Lance said. “We need to get on that train. When’s it coming in?”

A surprisingly close-by train whistle answered his question.

The three of them looked to the horizon, eyeing the plume of steam slowly coasting towards them over the darkened skyline.

It didn’t take long for the trio to get set up after that. By the time the north-bound train had pulled into the station the ramp was ready, Lance was already sitting in the driver’s seat with Hunk to his left and Pidge wedged with the whiskey in the back, and the engine was running.

Lance threw Old Blue into gear and inched forward, up the ramp, into the train carriage that would deliver them to freedom. As easy as that. It didn’t feel like it should be that easy, but Lance tried as hard as he could not to look that particular gift horse in the mouth.

They were just finishing their tie-down of the car when the whistle sounded and the rumble of the train’s engines rippled through the length of its body. Now, Lance could exhale a little. Now they were moving. Now they–

There was a sound from outside.

The tearing sound of a small engine – no – more than one. A small engine and several bigger ones. An uneven patter of distant gunshots. Getting louder. Getting louder every second.

The train inched forward.

“Iverson’s boys?” Pidge asked, her voice small.

“If it’s Iverson’s boys, who the hell are they shooting at?” Hunk replied.

The trio looked at each other and then jumped into action.

Lance kicked the ramp away from the train. “Get the doors!” He yelled, and Pidge and Hunk, like the well-oiled machine they were, ran to opposite sides of the large, sliding doors and started to push.

The train wasn’t moving nearly fast enough yet.

Lance scrambled back to the car, reaching into the rear window to pull the tarp back over the hooch. _Keep it safe, keep it safe,_ he thought. That was the only goal. And if he also grabbed his gun out of the back seat at the same time? That was just added security.

He turned to the doors, just in time to hear a cacophonous crash followed by a shadow that slipped through the doors just as Hunk and Pidge slammed it shut. Lance’s hand went immediately for the gun on his hip, but he hesitated before drawing it.

The figure who had just entered rolled to a stop on the floor, awkwardly trying to stay in an upright position while clutching something to their chest.

It was a man. He was young, probably about Lance’s age, but very different looking. He was smaller, a little broader, and distinctly foreign. As he steadied himself, he turned and looked the three of them, piercing eyes peering through a messy mop of dark hair.

“Evenin’,” he said, very out of breath. “Is this the train to St. Louis?”

“Um, yes?” Pidge said, a little incredulously.

The man nodded and got to his feet, finally revealing what he was holding against his chest. It was a small ginger cat, gently blinking from where it sat tucked into his jacket as if amused by the situation if found itself in. It seemed to be the only one; everyone else stood there is shock. Lance decided he’d be the first to get angry.

“What the hell is going on?!” He shouted.

 

* * *

 

 When Keith had ditched his bike at the train-yard and jumped into an open carriage, he hadn’t expected it to be occupied, but it wasn’t filled with mobsters or orange-bandanna wearing bootleggers, so he counted that as a positive.

“Just… takin’ a breather,” he said, answering the tall one’s question, desperately trying to embody that claim with large, gulping breaths. “Getting shot at by some… orange chumps. You know how it is.”

Keith resisted the urge to sit down again, despite how tired he was. He took a few more breaths, steadying himself. Cat meowed, and he gave her a quick scratch behind the ears.

“Did you say orange?” the little one of the three said and – woah! – that was either a girl or a middle-schooler.

“Y-you a dame?” He blurted, unable to stop himself.

The little one spluttered and turned red, which Keith took as a yes even before she said, “Yeah, but what does it matter, huh?”

He opened his mouth to apologise, because that had been pretty rude of him, but she put up a hand. “You said orange, yeah? Like bandannas?” She mimed a bandanna around her neck.

The pieces clicked together like one of the jigsaw puzzles his father used to do at Christmas. Except this puzzle wasn’t of a field of flowers or a map of Canada. This puzzle was of a terrible, horrible situation he was stuck in the middle of.

“Wait, you know them? Those guys are after _you_!?” Keith cried. The tall guy shrugged.

Keith scoffed, unable to keep the hot anger in his chest from boiling over. “Do you know what I had to do to get away from them?!”

“I’m guessing something that made them very angry,” said the girl, who was sticking her head through the gap in the doors. “They’re behind us.”

“In cars!?” The big guy yelled, running to see. The sound of distant gunfire echoed far off – but not far off to make Keith feel safe, and the two of them jumped back from the door with a speed that was almost comical. Keith, however, wasn’t finding this situation very funny.

“Okay, What I did was definitely not enough to warrant chasing down a train,” Keith said. “What did _you_ do to them?!”

The three strangers shared a long glance that Keith hated the unspoken implications of. He hated them more when the girl spoke, confirming a fear Keith hadn’t known he’d had. “We, uh… may have stolen thousands of dollars’ worth of whiskey from them.”

She pointed to the blue car nestled in the back of the carriage, and Keith found himself staggering over. There, haphazardly covered by a thin tarp, were bottles upon bottles of dark liquid. Keith needed to sit down. Of _course,_ the train he decides to take north would be the one crawling with bootleggers. _So much for laying low_.

“This is just _swell_ ,” he mumbled. Cat meowed.

“How long until they catch up with us?” The tall guy said, turning to more urgent matters than Keith.

It was the big guy that answered. “We’re still in the city, so the roads are smaller,” he said. “But once they’re on the open road they’re going to catch up with us in no time…”

“And from there–“ the girl started, but gunfire cut her off. She let the statement hang.

Keith felt a writhing in his jacket and looked down to see Cat trying to duck her head fully beneath his collar. He felt his heart sink. Cats were smart, his was maybe the smartest he’d ever met, and she knew trouble when she smelled it. _“We’ll be fine, Cat,”_ he whispered.

“Hey, new guy! Quit it with the kitty! You packing heat?” The tall one was shouting at him from where he now stood at the door, peeking out through the small gap they had wrenched open.

The sound of gunfire and revving motors was far too close to them now. Keith's hand went to the gun jammed in his waistband.

“Yeah," he said. "But we’re going to need more than four guns to take out all the guys who were chasing me.”

“Well, good news.” The tall one twirled his gun around his index finger. Keith hadn’t gotten any better with accents in the last 20 minutes, but this guy’s one wasn’t as…   _American_ … as the others. He made a note of that. “Looks like we only have two guns.”

“Oh perfect,” Keith said. “We’re dead then. Bye.”

“We’re not dead yet,” the tall one said, suddenly serious.

Keith frowned. “We’re going to need something _much_ more powerful than a couple of pea-shooters if we–“

His voice trailed off and his eyes trailed to the car tucked away in the corner.

“Hey… how strong is that stuff?” Keith asked suddenly. The girl looked where he was pointing.

“The whiskey? It’s strong… like 80 proof, maybe 90?” The girl looked taken aback initially, but then looked thoughtful, like she understood where he was going with this line of questioning. “W-we have stronger stuff, though, like 100 proof.”

_Perfect._

“Where is it?”

She answered with action. She sprinted over to the car and threw the side door open. She dug around for a second that stretched far too long and pulled out three bottles of different, less presentable looking alcohol.

The big guy gasped. “What are you going to do with that!? It hasn’t been tested yet!”

“We’re not drinking it,” Keith said.

He grabbed two of the bottles from the girl’s hands and twisted the caps off with his teeth. He sliced the edge of his lip in the process and the spicy tang of the moonshine burned in the cut. He winced, but soldiered on.

“What’s your plan?” The tall guy asked. Keith spat the caps to the floor.

“I need you to siphon some oil from the tank,” he said. A look of recognition passed over the three faces in front of him, but it was the tall guy that sprang into action first.

“Alright!” He yelled, wild laughter playing on his voice. “Let’s light ‘em up!”

Keith jammed the open bottle between his knees and began ripping the fabric of his shirt using his teeth. The rough, cheap cotton tore easily, and Keith very quickly had two long strips in his hands. He grabbed the bottle and began to pour the moonshine over the material. He soaked them – drenched them – like his hands had learned to do so long ago.

The tall guy emerged from behind the car.

“I have it!” he said. “Get over here quick!”

Keith got to his feet, shoving the wet strips of fabric in his teeth for safe keeping, the odorous liquor burning his mouth. As he came around to the back of the car, he saw the tall guy crouched down by its hood, a long pipe leading from his hands into the car’s underbelly. Thick, black liquid was dripping out from the end of the pipe.

Keith had done this before – a dozen times, maybe more – but he’d never done it in a place like this. He just hoped the routine he’d memorised so carefully would be enough. He placed the open bottle on the ground. ‘Fill this,’ he said, passing it off to the tall guy. He obliged, and began to fill the empty space in the bottle with viscous black liquid.

“What’s your name?” The tall guy asked, grinning wildly as he worked.

“Keith,” Keith said, not really caring if these people knew it.

“Lance.” The guy offered his own name, his voice almost giddy. “And you, my friend, are the _craziest_ person I’ve ever met.”

 _You have no idea_ , Keith thought, and he smiled despite himself. “Fill this one.”

The two boys swapped bottles. Keith, now holding the mixture of motor oil and moonshine, wasted no time is shoving the cotton strip inside the neck of the bottle, worming the smelly rag deep into the volatile slurry. He reached for the other one and did the same. For a moment, he sat there and stared at his creations. They were shoddy and rushed, but he hoped against hope they’d be good enough to do the job.

The sound of gunshots rang from outside, snapping him back to the present. Keith stood up, bottle in hand, and passed the other to Lance.

“Make it count,” he said, and ran for the door.

The other two bootleggers had swung the doors open while Keith and Lance had worked, exposing the train car to the world tearing past outside. The tracks were still on open ground, right next to the road, and there was nothing between them and the three black cars of their pursuers but a small, 8-foot gap.

_Perfect._

“Got a light?” Keith shouted over the blustering cacophony of the wind. All three of the bootleggers pulled out lighters. Keith grabbed the one closest to him and flicked it open. It sparked to life, orange flame trembling – almost in anticipation – in front of him.

Keith lit the rag. The fire burned – oddly – red instead of orange.

 _Oh. This is_ not _clean moonshine._

_Excellent._

He could see the two men from the church in one of the cars. The little one was sitting in the back with a Tommy gun slung over the side window. The big guy was in the front, driving with more ferocity that the others in his crew. Keith couldn’t blame him; after all, that shoulder wound looked nasty.

He heard the sound of Lance lighting his rag. Time was short. He locked eyes with Lance, and the two of them nodded in unison.

_Three. Two. One._

Keith could hear the sound of the gun cocking, he could see the whites of their eyes.

He threw the bottle.

It hit the hood of the thugs’ car and for a terrifying, too-long moment, nothing happened. Then, like fire from hell itself, the bottle exploded, sending a wave of red flames rippling across the body of the car. The hulking black beast, now engulfed in flames, swerved back and forth on the road, veering to the left too hard and slamming into the second car like a flaming arrowhead. The second car buckled, swerving left and spinning out on the dusty road, falling behind as the flaming car veered off into the night. The only one left was the third car, whose unknown driver pushed forward. Keith saw the metallic flash of a gun hanging out of the window. He turned to yell at his companion.

“Lance-“

But he was already ahead of him.

Lance threw the bottle, finding his target on the third car with pinpoint accuracy – not just hitting it, but passing it straight through the passenger side window. The flames erupted within the cab, briefly illuminating a grisly tableau of its two occupants, like grotesque shadow figures, against the red light. The image vanished as quickly as the screams did, replaced with violent, blazing light as the car immediately stuttered out of control, swerving madly towards them and colliding with the side of the train.

The car flew into the air and fire, like ribbons, streamed out of every window as it spun and flipped onto its side. The sound of screeching metal pierced the air, masking for a moment the rhythmic chugging of the train and the howling of the wind. The train rumbled as shards of metal crashed up against its iron wheels like waves on a cliff. Then, like it had never happened, the burning carcass of the car fell into the distance and disappeared as the train thundered on.

The four occupants of the train carriage stood in awed shock in the open door, wind whipping past them as they silently stared at the place their pursuers had once been.

“Oh my god,” the girl finally said. “That was… oh my God. Was… was the fire red?”

“Yup,” said the big guy in a small voice.

“Oh… I’m very glad we didn’t drink that.”

“Yup.”

With the silence broken, Keith turned to Lance. “Did you throw that _through_ the window?”

Lance was stood stock-still, eyes wide. “…Oops,” he said quietly.

The big guy turned to walk away from the door, making it halfway across to the car before deciding it better to just sit down on the floor.

It took them a little while to clean up the mess Keith had hurriedly imposed upon them. Keith helped out as best he could, but it seemed the three bootleggers knew their way around their own equipment much better than him, so for the most part he stood on the side-lines with Cat firmly clasped in his arms and listened as they told him their story.

They asked him where he was from first, and Keith gave the standard answer: His name was Keith and the cat was called Cat. He was the son of Korean immigrants and had been raised in California. He’d spent his teen years in several uneventful places across the US. It wasn’t a total lie, but it wasn’t the total truth.

Then they told him about themselves. Their names were Lance, Pidge (the girl), and Hunk (the big one) and they were – obviously – bootleggers. They used to work for a gang in Nashville, for some guy called Iverson Keith vaguely knew the name of, but left, leading to them being chased by thugs across state lines. Hunk and Pidge were moonshiners – and pretty good ones, if they were to be taken at their word. Lance was a bootlegger, or at least Keith inferred that he was; he was staying pretty quiet about himself.

 “So, where are you taking this stuff?” he asked after introductions had been made and they had all settled down to sit and eat. The doors had been left open now allowing them to look out over the night-time fields of southern Missouri.

“There’s a speakeasy in St. Louis looking for a new supply,” Pidge explained, cracking into a can of something. “We figured the best bootleggers in Tennessee might help them out a bit!”

“ _You’re_ the best bootleggers in Tennesse?” Keith couldn’t keep the doubt out of his voice. He absently pet Cat, who hadn’t left his jacket, while they talked.

“They’re offering a lot more money than our old gig,” Hunk explained, he’d already eaten about four cans of peaches and looked to be taking a breather. Pidge squawked indignantly at her partner’s refusal to play along.

 _Money_. Keith hated that he was now interested.

“You could… come with us,” Hunk said. “We could always use more help, and you seem handy with… uh… setting things on fire?”

Keith snorted. He _was_ good at that, wasn’t he?

 _You can’t go back into that world, Keith_ , a voice inside his head said. _You’re going to St. Louis to find Shiro and nothing else_.

But the taste of the moonshine in his mouth, still burning his cut lip and mingling every so sharply with the blood, was a vibrant force. He felt the chemical tang of it – a taste he had come to love over the years. Despite the copious quantities of lead that was apparently running through some of it, the stuff these guys were peddling was _good_. It was good enough to be worth far more than the measly communion wine Keith had been selling to dumb country kids. It meant money and it meant more of the rush he had felt tonight – a rush he hadn’t felt in months.

An offer to get in on an operation like that was a rarity and, to some, a blessing.

He was in St. Louis to find Shiro, sure, but how was he supposed to do that on the chump change he’d been making up until now?

“Sure,” he said, trying to sound casual. “What’s the name of the place?”

Pidge wiggled her fingers at Keith. “It’s shrouded in mystery,” she cooed, not sounding at all serious. “But we have connections in town who say it’s called the _Chateau des Lions_.”

“ _El Castillo de Leones_ ,” Lance said in Spanish through a mouthful of baked beans, which didn’t help Keith any more than the French. That must have been apparent on his face or in his silence, because Lance quickly said it in English too. “The Castle of Lions.”

He’d never heard of it before, and he’d heard of a lot of places. “I don’t know it.”

“It’s new,” Pidge said. “But it is real. Hopefully.”

Keith sighed. Normally he wouldn’t take on a risky gambit like this, but he was out of options. Selling church wine wouldn’t be able to prop him up forever.

They settled back into some simulacrum of silence.

“You can put your things in the car if you want,” Hunk said a while later. Keith nodded and got to his feet.

The car was a behemoth and he had been wanting an excuse to look at it closer; A four-seater with even more space in the back, thick wheels for uneven country roads and smooth city ones alike, a solid steel chassis, and a blue paint job that was anything but subtle. He couldn’t fathom how a bootlegger like Lance, who already seemed to stand out enough, had survived _this_ long in _this_ car, but he decided he didn’t really care.

All he cared about was this car’s cargo and where it would take him.

_One step closer to finding Shiro._

He tossed his satchel in the back seat and paused.

Keith looked down at the bottle of wine in his bag, nestled next to his one change of clothes, a can of tuna for him and Cat to share, and a few loose bullets. It seemed pretty pointless to keep it now, with a veritable fortune of whiskey three feet from where he was standing. _Better not waste it._ He leaned over and tugged it out, making sure not to upset Cat with the action.

“What’s that?” Pidge asked as Keith settled back onto the floor. “Is that wine?”

“Yeah, I was going to sell it, but I guess I don’t have to anymore,” Keith said. He looked at the label. Sacramental Wine, bottled in Napa Valley, 1926. He nodded to himself as if he had any idea what those words indicated about the quality. “It’s real stuff too.”

Keith could almost see the mental math Lance was doing. “Wait…” He said, eyes narrowing. “Did you steal that from a church?”

Keith popped the cap and let the smell of grapes and Jesus fill the train car. “Do you really care?” He asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I mean… a _little_ ,” Lance said, unconvincingly. Cat meowed like she, too, didn’t believe him.

After a moment of silence, Lance wordlessly grabbed the bottle and they shared it around as the night grew to its full, star-filled splendor outside. They sped off into the unknown under the moonlight, Lawrence at their backs and St. Louis on their minds – drinking holy wine without the whispers of a single prayer on their lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! The next chapter is basically 99% done, but after that it's ??? Let me know if this is something you’d like to see continued 😊 In the meantime, feedback, while not necessary, would be greatly appreciated! Also, you can find me as always @fizzityuck on tumblr. 
> 
> In the meantime, meantime, here’s some ~fun facts~ regarding real-world stuff in this chapter:
> 
> Sacramental wine, alongside medicinal alcohol, was the only form of legal alcohol in the US during Prohibition. Because their Canon Law specifically requires grape wine, the Catholic church forced a loophole that ended up pretty much single-handedly saving the American wine industry from collapse in the 1920s. Church wine was stolen quite often during Prohibition, usually by young people trying to make quick money as it wasn’t as valuable as the more potent bootleg liquor. 
> 
> A rule of thumb for any of you rowdy troublemakers out there: any alcohol above 80 proof/40%abv can be ignited, whereas 100 proof/50%abv (i.e. absinthe) can maintain a steady flame. Fire was, and still is, used as a method of testing the quality of homemade alcohol. In the case of illicit moonshine, the colour of the flame allegedly told the brewers if the moonshine had been contaminated by poisons such as lead from the distilling equipment (which would burn red). Yikes!


	2. An Undiscovered Country

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which families are lost, a wager is made, and a mutually beneficial opportunity presents itself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trying to use at least some historically accurate slang in this. Thank god we haven't stopped using the term "guys" since the 20s or I might've just had to die instead of writing this.

_Two Months Earlier._

  
_May 2nd, 1927_  
_St. Louis, Missouri._

 

Watching the death of her father’s legacy had been like watching dominoes fall. Her father’s empire, a snaking kingdom that clung tight to the shores of the churning Mississippi, collapsed swiftly and completely. A destruction spurned from one small act of unfathomable violence.

Allura remembered that night in moments, snatches of vision and smell and touch and sound and taste – oh, the _taste_ – that pieced together a bloody mosaic that would wrap itself around her waking mind for the years that followed. It was hell, that night in New Orleans, the night her father was murdered.

Unlike others of her kind, the AuClair heiress had lived a childhood that wasn’t gilded in gold and pearl by the excess that came unspoken with old money. Her family had lived a humble life, she was born to a French father and a Creole mother and the streets of New Orleans were her home. But it was not until the beginning of the Prohibition that Allura first tasted security and wealth in the jungle of her city.

It was 1920, and she was 14 when her father opened his first speakeasy. From then, their humble business venture spiralled into an empire of liquor and liberty. In its peak, Alfor AuClair’s kingdom had stretched from the banks of the Big Easy to the bustling ports of Memphis and St. Louis, the lady river a constant confidant and accomplice.

Allura never left New Orleans in those years, so instead she took to learning its underground like it was a new, undiscovered country. She lived in its speakeasies, immersed herself in the sounds and sights of the jazz and the fashion and the people.

She reveled in the stories she heard in her father’s clubs. She would sit on the bar as the young, foreign rum-runners, with accents and voices as smooth as the liquor they bartered, told her stories of the federal goons trying to nab them in Tennessee, and the heavy odour of Canadian whiskey that rolled through the cities of Illinois – no match for their Caribbean rum, they’d say.

Travellers from farther away, with the musical tones of Sicily and Naples on their tongues, would tell scarier tales of the mafiosos in New York, expanding their dominions outside the borders of the state called Empire. Others, with the grating rasps of moonshine and the northern states in their throats, warned of the dangers in Chicago – the mobsters of the Windy City with their decadent, lustful violence.

Those were the parts of the stories Allura wasn’t supposed to hear. They were the ones her father would take into the back rooms and chase with hushed whispers and a wad of bills passing from his hands to the hands of a stranger. She tried her best to ignore it.

It was 1923, and she was 17 when it all fell apart, when the true undiscovered country snapped its cold jaws over everything Allura loved.

Allura had been hiding in the back rooms, the day the visitors from the north came. Her mother, with dark hair framing her face in the dim light of the store room – like an angel, Allura would remember afterwards – had told her to keep quiet. The men, in dark suits and flowers, had arrived with proposals on their lips and guns on their hips. Those men, who wore poisonously purple carnations in their hats, had given two options to the AuClair kingpin: Give up your kingdom, or we take it from you. It was a question with one answer.

Allura’s mother had died first. Allura had seen the aftermath, not the action. Her mother, crumpled on the floor like a doll with cut strings – the beads of her dress shot loose in the act, rolling along the floor like a child’s marbles.

Her father had died second. Allura saw him die in full, glorious detail. Seeing him was like seeing a castle’s walls fall. Something so strong and sturdy, broken down and leaving all it protected vulnerable. The man who shot him had his face covered by a scarf, but his eyes – amber and piercing – were dead eyes upon her father as he fell. There was nothing in them.

Allura ran then, peeling away from her hiding place and diving into one of the many secret passages in the speakeasy she had learned like the back of her hand. One or two of the men had followed her, for how long she didn’t know.

She ran. She ran through the back streets, down the French Quarter and the lights and the jazz and the people. She ran into the woods, through the thick, wet maze of the bayou, her bruised and battered feet slipping into the mud and tripping on roots as she ran for hours that felt like days. She remembered for years afterwards the stagnant, poisonous taste of the swamp between her teeth and tongue.

When she finally stopped she was completely alone. She had no one to run from, but nowhere to run to. No family to go back to. Nothing.

She had nothing in the world but her name and the name of the family that had destroyed it.

 _Galra_.

And that was enough.

Four years later, Allura was leaning against the window of her town-car on the St. Louis riverside, staring across a strange and foreign Mississippi. She let her companion’s words – much like the waves on the riverbanks – roll over her unnoticed. Listening was Coran’s job; Allura was just there to be the money and the pretty face. They could excuse her daydreaming.

She had grown up around rivers. In the summers, she and the neighbourhood children would play on the banks of the wide, southern Mississippi, splashing in slow waters bound for the turbid seas of the Gulf. The Mississippi of the north, the one she looked over now, did not have that charm; it was smaller, polluted, and fast.

She could chalk it up to the blinding taint of nostalgia, perhaps, but her problems with the river were a scapegoat for her larger problems with the city itself. She had tried hard in the past year to make St. Louis feel like home, but nothing about the cold, smog-filled, blustering metropolis felt like home to her. This narrow and silvery thing was not the river of her youth – but it was still _her_ river. It had to be.

“Miss Prince?”

Allura looked up at the sound of her fake name, meeting the eyes of her three companions. Mr. Grey and Mr. Gray, the bankers from Detroit, were looking at her expectantly, while Coran Darby, her business partner, was looking anywhere but at her with a look of barely controlled anxiety on his face.

“I’m sorry, gentlemen,” Allura smiled, remembering to keep her accent in check; investors liked the allure of a Southern Belle, but a strong New Orleans accent from a black woman didn’t exactly have the same effect. She ignored the hot bubble of anger that thought formed in her chest. “I was lost in thought for just a moment…”

“Not a worry, Miss Prince,” said Mr. Grey, who Allura thought might be the one on the right. “My colleague and I were just asking how long you are planning to stay up north?”

Allura smiled. “As long as it takes to complete my business, Mr. Grey.”

Allura saw Coran twitch ever so slightly at her words and stifled a smirk at how uncomfortable she was making him.

“Speakeasy start-ups take a while, ma’am,” Mr Gray said, pushing his dumb glasses up his nose. “Are you sure this venture is… wise, for someone such as yourself?”

The question, though not theoretically unexpected, caught Allura off guard. She felt that anger begin to bubble again, and she sat up straighter, addressing the bankers in a tone maybe too strong. “Someone like what, Mr Gray?”

Suddenly, Coran’s arm was on her shoulder, stilling her. Allura closed her mouth, and sat back against the seat.

“What Miss Prince is trying to say, Mr Gray, is that she believes she has enough of the groundwork ready to turn the _Chateau_ into a sound investment in far less time than you expect,” Coran said, putting his best respectful flourish into the words. Allura cleared her throat.

“We have the building, brewing supplies, and smuggling routes laid out in detail,” Allura explained. “We are more than prepared for opening within a month – with your financial assistance.”

The bankers exchanged a look. Mr. Grey turned to Allura.

“We are happy to lend financial assistance to those we see investment opportunities in. Even a woman such as yourself should be able to understand that we cannot just throw money at every half-baked business that comes through our door. Now, if you had more staff, and a stronger management team, perhaps we could talk.”

“We know we are not the first bankers you have come to with this proposition, Miss Prince,” Mr. Gray said, holding up a hand to silence her. “And you must see by now why that is. You just don’t have the immediate connections that give investors like us the assurance we need.”

It took all of Allura’s poise and grace and control to say the words, “I understand, Mr Gray. Thank you for your time.”

The town car pulled over at the side of the road, outside the hulking, ugly investment office the two bankers called home. They all got out to see the bankers off, though Coran lead the charge when it came to parting pleasantries. Allura didn’t trust herself to say anything more to the men.

As soon as the bankers were in their dull black cars and driving away out of sight, Allura dropped her entire act. It was like shaking loose a heavy overcoat – even her tongue, strained from delivering that faux, goody-two-shoes accent, felt weighted in her mouth.

“Those racist, chauvinistic, pretentious little…” Allura growled, letting her voice drawl back into its natural cadence. She clenched her fists together in mid-air, as if grasping for the right insult to tack onto the end of her sentence. Coming up short, she decided to just yell in frustration. Beside her, Coran sighed.

“I apologise for what I said back there, Allura,” he admitted. “I just said what I thought they needed to hear.”

Allura smiled up at him. “It’s alright, Coran, I understand. I should have expected them to be that way.”

She and Coran walked down the riverside, watching the small boats bob in the current.

She let her eyes drift from the boats to her companion, he looked tired and she didn’t blame him. It had been a long day in a string of long days, but she was glad to solider through them with him by her side.

Coran Darby was an oddity in many ways. While he had the look of just about any moderately wealthy, white, southern man Allura had known growing up – freckled skin, red hair, and a well-pressed suit – he could not have been more clearly foreign.

His accent was a strange, thick brew from far more south than Allura or anyone she knew had ever been. He was from New Zealand, the "land of the long white cloud" (as she had heard him call it once), a place as unknown to her as any place obscured by clouds that long could be. She knew nothing of his home, but she knew him; He was a friend. Her father had met him during The Great War, in the trenches in Turkey, both fighting a losing battle in a war they’d eventually win.

It was that friendship forged in fire that made him trustworthy, and after her family’s death, it had taken one letter from Allura for Coran to pack his things and sail to the United States. He had picked up where her parents had left off and hadn’t left her side in almost four years.

“What should we do now?” He asked. Allura drifted out of her thoughts and looked back at the boats, still going nowhere.

“As much as I hate to say it,” Allura admitted. “I think we need to take their advice.”

Coran twirled his moustache absentmindedly. “And do what?”

Allura bit her lip. “We need proper bootleggers – people to help make product, distribute it, carry it… we need runners.”

“Do you have a plan for finding some? It’s unlikely we’ll get our pick of the litter with our establishment as… uh, _grassroots_ , as it is.”

“We don’t need talent, Coran, we just need desperate people who can look the part,” She turned to face him, smiling. “I think it’s about time we take Mr. Shirogane up on his offer.”

Coran sighed. “You are every bit as conniving as your father was; do you know that?”

“You tell me every day.”

Coran eventually left to go start the car once more, but Allura stayed by the river a little longer.

The sun was setting over the boats bobbing and tugging against their tethers in the river current. This river and St. Louis was a pillar of her former empire. Its veins and arteries stretched out across the country from the southern bayous to the Great Lakes, from the Mexican deserts to the cold, New England coasts. It was the perfect place to rebuild. She would flourish here. She had to. It was the last haven of what was once a shimmering kingdom. She had only herself and the few that remained latched to her father’s name, but that was enough. It had to be enough.

She was going to take it all back.

 

* * *

 

 

Being a cop in 1927 was a difficult job, which was why Takashi Shirogane was not a cop.

That didn’t mean his job wasn’t hard. Working as a P.I. was also quite a task, but one that – oddly enough – didn’t have as much of a track record of fraud and mafia dealings as the police, _especially_ the NYPD. Shiro had seen every flavour of trouble walk through his door during his time in New York. In a city that was bright and full enough to feel like a world of its own at times, every kind of person could be found skulking through the dizzying labyrinth of streets outside Shiro’s window. Those people, along with their problems, were his lifeblood as much as they were the city’s. 

But the case that had finally driven him from that sleepless coast wasn’t New York’s to sink its teeth into. That case had been one to keep away from the watchful eyes of Lady Liberty, so much so that it had sent him halfway across the country to get away from its repercussions. That case had been personal.

Keith Kogane had not been a bad person – that was something Shiro liked to try and convince himself of, even six months after the fact. He hadn’t been a bad person – he was just a good person who’d had a knack for getting involved in bad people’s business.

 _“I need to get out of the city_ ,” Keith had said. He had spoken softly, in Korean, so the woman at the diner couldn’t understand him. He’d obviously preferred the strange look she gave him over the alternative.

 _“What happened?_ ” Shiro had asked in similar fashion.

He remembered the way Keith had sighed in a way that was far too weary for his then 19 years. _“I’ve just had enough. I need to leave.”_

_“I don’t think they’ll let you.”_

_“If you sneak me out they won’t know I’m gone until it’s too late.”_

_“We’re talking about the Galra,”_   Shiro had insisted. _“Their operation is tight. And running from them now won’t just put you in danger–“_

_“It’ll endanger you, too, that’s what you’re trying to say?"_

He hadn’t been trying to say it at all. He’d been thinking it, sure, but he’d been trying as hard as he could not to seem as outwardly selfish as his inner self apparently wanted to be.

_“Keith.”_

_“I get it,”_ the kid had said. _“I really do. But I can’t last much longer with these people and you’re the only one I can talk to, Shiro, please.”_

 _“I’ll see what I can do.”_ He’d said finally. When Keith had looked wary, he’d leaned over, gripped his hand in the way he used to when the boy was younger. _“I’ll be looking out for you, kid, I always have.”_

Six months later and Shiro hadn’t managed to keep his side of the promise. He had no clue where Keith was, no clue if he was even _alive_. All he knew was the Galra. Their movements. Their numbers. Their slow, dominating crawl from the Eastern seaboard into the Heartland. But what good was all that research if he couldn’t use it to find the kid he’d sworn to look after.

Six months later and his digging into the crime family had forced him to leave Manhattan, to travel inland to St-Fucking-Louis, to uproot from everything he’d known with nothing waiting for him where he was going.

Six months later and Shiro was sitting in his office in St. Louis, staring through a haze of cigarette smoke at the backwards letters on his door that, from the outside, spelled “Sven Holgersson, Private Eye”. It was a fake name that was arguably _too_ white but, hey, at least it got more people through the door than “Takashi Shirogane” would.

It was ten minutes to five when the door unexpectedly opened.

A young woman stepped into the office for a moment before coughing on the smoke and stepping back out into the hall.

“ _Mon Dieu,_ Mister Shirogane!” cried a familiar, accented voice. “Did your mother never teach you how to open windows?”

Shiro scrambled to his feet, discarding his cigarette by tossing it aside. “Sorry, Miss AuClair,” He bolted to the windows and threw them open, watching the built-up smoke in the room pour out with the air currents like they, like him, were sick of this dark and dreary office. “I wasn’t expecting anyone today.”

Allura AuClair stepped back into his slightly-less-hazy office.

She was undeniably beautiful – with rich dark skin, bright eyes, and silky dark hair she wore tightly styled under a fashionable hat. She was dressed in a way that made everything in Shiro’s office look old and decrepit by comparison. The first time he had met her she’d been bundled up against the April chill in a heavy, elegant fur coat, which she had substituted this crisp May evening for one of fine, baby blue wool.

“You haven’t cleaned since the last time I was here,” she remarked in her strong, New Orleans accent.

She screamed money - everything about her did. But Shiro knew enough about her family’s history to know judging her on that front alone was a grave mistake.

“Are you surprised?” He said.

She smiled. “No.”

He gestured to the armchair that was always set-up facing his desk, the one for clients, and waited until she had lowered herself delicately into it to sink himself in his own chair.

He glanced at the cigarette he’d discarded in his haste to open the windows and chided himself. _What a waste._ He tugged another one out of the pack on his desk and lit it. Taking another drag, another breath out, he watched the coiling patterns of smoke slip up into the ever-present cloud of haze at his ceiling.

“You know,” Miss AuClair remarked, “My grandmother used to say gaspers are poison for your lungs.”

“Well,” Shiro said, taking another drag. “When she has evidence to that fact, I’ll gladly listen to her.”

Miss AuClair laughed. “May I trouble you for one, then, Mister Shirogane?”

Shiro pushed the pack across the table towards her and she took one gratefully. He watched her carefully as she lit it and took a slow drag.

“I’m assuming this isn’t a social visit, Miss AuClair.”

She didn’t answer for a moment. She exhaled with the same slowness she had inhaled with, sending a gentle stream of smoke out of her mouth and into the air. Shiro couldn’t help but think of dragons. Fire-breathing demons exhaling smoke and brimstone and power.

“No,” she said finally.

He nodded. “Then let’s talk business.”

He opened up his notebook, mostly out of a habit too ingrained to shake, and started taking notes as the heiress started speaking.

“This is in reference to your offer a month ago,’’ she said. Shiro had been half expecting this, so he was able to tone down the surprise on his face. “I know you are aware of my family history – my relationship to the Galra crime family in particular – and I know _you know_   that I wish to open a speakeasy in St. Louis."

“Hmm... “Open a speakeasy” is a soft way of saying it,” Shiro said. “I would describe it as “Rebuilding a former empire from the ground up with my bare hands”.”

And there was that fire again. The burning fire of ambition that seemed to house itself in Allura AuClair’s chest. The fire that spilled out of her in the form of too-wide, too-dangerous smiles, just like the one she was wearing now.

“I want to claim this city for my own,” she said. “I want to take the Mississippi back from the Galra.”

Shiro was intrigued – he had been since he first met the heiress in May – but he was a professional, and professionals always dug a little deeper. “You know as well as I do that there are no Galra operations in St. Louis.”

“Yet,” Miss AuClair stated simply. “You and I both know they’ve spent the last four years crawling their way up from the territory they stole from my father. St. Louis is their goal, and I can only stop them by being stronger.”

Shiro laughed, sending a puff of smoke across the table. “And you want my help to do that.”

“Yes.” Miss AuClair leaned forward, putting out her cigarette in Shiro’s ashtray. “You told me a month ago you have ways to spread word of my... need for product... out of state. I’d like to take you up on that.”

“Rumours are easy things to spin, Miss AuClair, but suppliers and runners aren’t going to throw themselves at your feet just like that.”

“I don’t expect them too. But I don’t have a lot of options left, Mister Shirogane. I’m guessing you don’t either.”

Shiro wondered what she meant by that. It implied something he wasn’t comfortable with – it implied awareness of knowledge he’d tried to keep hidden. But he pushed those feelings away for now and focused on the matter at hand, the matter that was sitting in his armchair, offering him work and connections and - probably - money. How could he refuse that?

He put his cigarette out too. "I think you've got my attention, Miss AuClair."

She grinned, an open and unguarded expression of genuine pleasure. “Well, if we’re going to be in business together I must insist you call me Allura, Mister Shirogane.”

He laughed. “Then I must insist you call me Takashi.”

They shook hands and, for the first time in months, Shiro felt a tenuous connection between himself and another person start to form. This sensation was almost shocking. Him? Putting down roots in St. Louis? What had the world come to?

But he smiled, genuinely, because something in his gut told him this was going to more than profitable. This was going to be, perhaps, a little fun.

 

* * *

 

_May 3rd, 1927  
St. Louis, Missouri._

“Mr. Grey! Mr. Gray!” Allura called as she half-walked, half-ran into the investment bureau, chasing the receding silhouettes of the two bankers. “Can I have a moment with you both.”

The lobby of the bureau was as dry and boring as the outside. Grey walls and wrought décor that looked turn of the century in their design. Nothing about it gave any impression of comfort or kindness, and neither did the people, who gawked at her and her sudden entrance with, at best, confusion and, at worst, discomfort.

The two bankers stopped in their tracks and turned to face her.

“M-Miss Prince, whatever are you doing here?” Said the one to the left who Allura thought might be Mr. Grey.

“During business hours, too?” said the other in a hushed tone as she approached. Both looked almost offended, but Allura wasn’t going to let the ensuing rage that bubbled in the pit of her stomach deter her.

“I have an offer for you gentlemen,” she said. “I want you to hear me out.”

“Miss Prince.” Mr Gray sighed. “We already told you –“

“Give me until the end of the year,” she cut him off, catching them both off guard. “I will make the _Chateau_ the most popular speakeasy in St. Louis by the end of the year. If I do, you will promise to invest in my business and mine alone.”

There was a beat of silence before the two men erupted into laughter.

“How exactly are you supposing to _pay_ for this venture, Miss Prince?” Mr. Grey chortled.

“Out of pocket, for now,” she said, silently revelling in the twin looks of shock on the two men’s faces. “I have more than enough to make the _Chateau_ operational on my own. It just won’t be sustainable for long without your investment.”

“How is that supposed to be a tempting offer, Miss Prince?" Mr. Gray exclaimed. "An unsustainable speakeasy from a… woman… such as yourself.”

“Because _a woman such as myself_ intends to topple an empire, Sir,” she retorted, letting her real accent slip into her whisper. Not caring anymore. Not caring at all. “I intend to build the greatest boot-legging operation this or any side of the Mississippi has ever seen.”

She waited for them to laugh again but they didn’t. There was a fire in her that she breathed into her words – a ferocity that welcomed no amusement, that demanded respect. She stood there, a foot shorter and outnumbered but the most imposing person in the room. Mr. Grey swallowed.

“You have nothing to lose, gentlemen,” Allura said, smiling that smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “I’m the one risking everything.”

The two men looked at each other, then back at her.

“Come to our offices after five tonight," Mr Gray said quietly. "We’ll see what we can do.”

 

* * *

 

 

 _July 8th, 1927_  
_St. Louis, Missouri_

Two months later, Allura sat at her desk in the top-floor office of Arus Hair Salon & Barbershop, pouring over towers of files and documents that were most definitely not about hair care. 

Two months after her tenuous deal with the Misters Grey & Gray, Allura had managed to spiffy up the extensive basement levels of the barbershop into a respectable speakeasy. It had been that way once before. In the months leading up to Alfor's death he had been readying this place to open its doors - his first property in St. Louis. How proud he'd been. But that pride - his dreams - that had all ended along with him, and for the last four years the barbershop had been left to gather dust.

It's unopened status was a silver lining, though. It hadn't been counted among Alfor's other speakeasies, so it hadn't been taken by the Galra when they took his life and the rest of his kingdom. That left it to Allura, who had had to jump through dozens of uncomfortable and nigh unnecessary hoops to gain ownership of her father's former shop, to do it up like a proper front, to dust it off and pick it back up like she'd had to do to herself so many years ago.

She had almost everything ready; Sprawling maps of detailed bootlegging routes, ones her father kept secret from everyone else; Locked down locations of raw supplies, enough to make her operation almost self sufficient if need be; and space, so much _space._ The _Chateau des Lions_ was two and a half floors of open, well-ventilated, well-lit basement built on an old, unused sewage tunnel that led right out of the city. It was almost perfect. All she needed were the people to fill it. 

And that was proving the most difficult thing of all. 

She had six months to go in her deal with the bankers and no word had come to her from prospective suppliers or rum-runners or, most dire of all, actual moonshiners. She trusted Takashi's skills enough to be certain word had reached the cities in at least the surrounding states, but she wasn't sure what that word was.

Was the rumour that she was "just a girl, playing at being a kingpin like her daddy" like the bankers had so obviously thought? What if their efforts to spin the story into one of tantalizing opportunity had failed? What if she was sitting here on her hands while the entire Midwest and then some laughed at her desperate attempts to revive her father's legacy?

Allura looked down at the file she hadn't really been reading - it was boring drivel, something about sourcing glassware for the bar. Not for the first time, her thoughts turned to her father, wondering how on Earth he'd done this all on his own in the beginning.

"I'm in a real jam, _Papa_ ," she whispered, and huffed out a quiet laugh. _"J'aimerais que tu sois ici."_

 There was a knock at the door.

"Uh, Miss AuClair?" A muffled call came from the other side. 

"Come in," Allura sighed, and then straightened, putting on a serious appearance for whoever was about to come in.

The big oak door creaked open and Romelle – Allura wasn’t sure if that was her real name, it was just the one she was given – stood in the doorway.

She was a small thing, around Allura’s age but with little of her same stature and confidence. She was blonde and fair-skinned; first-generation Irish from New York or Boston or somewhere similar where it rained too much and smelled of the sea. She’d found her way into their motley band after her brother’s death in one of their early bootlegging ventures down-river a few years ago. Joining Allura’s cohort of spies had been her idea – not Allura’s. Maybe it was some kind of way to keep herself distracted. Allura knew what that was like.

She’d let her keep working, though. She was good at her job and Allura wasn’t choosy.

"Ma'am."

"Romelle? What is it?"

“Uhm,” Romelle said. “There’s been an incident... in Lawrence.”

The name of the town took a moment to catch up with Allura. She knew the place, vaguely, because one of her father’s old bootlegging routes ran through it. That was gone now, though. “Why should that concern us?”

“The mice –“ that was Romelle’s name for the spies “– they’ve been reportin’ small scuffles between bootleggers several counties down the river – across it too… in Tennessee.”

Allura couldn’t see where this was going. “And?”

“They’re movin’ closer to us, ma’am, I just thought you should know. The last one? In Lawrence? Three cars were set on fire chasin’ a St. Louis-bound cargo train. A buncha bootleggers outta Nashville died.”

That made Allura take pause. She put down the files she was looking at. “On _fire_?”

Romelle nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

Allura smirked. Served the bastards right for crossing state lines so nonchalantly. Beasts like bootleggers worked best in silence – what kind of unwise creatures had those dead men been to make all that noise and expect no repercussions? But their fiery demises raised new questions along with their smoke. Who’d set the fire? Who’d they been clashing with all the way from Nashville?

“Bootleggers coming to St. Louis…” She breathed, turning the idea over in her head, looking it up and down, seeing all its potential angles in clarity.

It was wishful thinking. There were dozens of speakeasies operating out of St. Louis, almost all of which were more powerful than hers. This could be – and probably was – a regular supply run to any one of her gargantuan competitors. One that had turned a little hairy, perhaps, but that was the most likely explanation. There was no way they were here for her… no way Takashi’s rumour mill had spun that quickly. 

But she was not too old to give up hope, yet. She had seen a lifetime’s worth of disappointments in a fraction of her own, enough that no one would blame her if she decided to be cynical, but she was _young_. She was young and hadn’t lost the spark in her eyes that let her see hope in places it might not rightly be. She saw it now.

Bootleggers, coming to St. Louis.

Six months to go.

She was going to take it all back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A chapter about #TheParents. They're good folks and writing them in this setting (especially Allura) has been all kinds of fun. Coran too! You can pry kiwi Coran out of my cold dead hands! Try it! This is the last of the two chapters I had mostly completed of this work. I have a couple ongoing projects right now, but please do let me know if this is one you'd like to see continued soon! Until then, keep it real. :)
> 
> more historical notes on this chapter:
> 
> During the Prohibition there was at least one actual speakeasy under a barbershop that was found out and raided because police noticed customers were leaving the shop without actually having had their hair cut. Wacky. Allura’s probably a bit more careful than whatever dinguses ran that thing. 
> 
> The military campaign Coran and Alfor met during was a real one in Gallipoli, Turkey during WWI. While it was spearheaded by Britain and France, a good portion of the soldiers there were Australians or New Zealanders and it more or less seared itself into their national histories due to just how /fucking awful/ it was for them in particular. It was horribly organised and around two thirds of the soldiers present died. There was a shit Mel Gibson movie made about it, too, if you’re into that.


End file.
